Seeing that the eldest sister had already given her gift, the second, fourth, and fifth sisters all stepped forward in turn to express their affection.
The second sister brought a famous ancient painting of immense collectible value.
The fourth sister presented a luxury watch worth two million.
As for the fifth sister, she handed him a card with two hundred thousand directly as pocket money.
Lin Xinyi, the third sister, stared blankly at everything happening at the banquet, feeling somewhat absent-minded.
"Third sister, where is my gift? You couldn't have forgotten, could you?"
Lin Qingyang walked up to Lin Xinyi with a sweet smile.
"How could I? I've been preparing your birthday gift for months!"
Lin Xinyi forced a smile, and with that, she produced a signed photograph of a celebrity.
"Yay! It's Kunkun's autographed photo, my absolute favorite! You're the best, third sister!"
This was something Lin Qingyang had been yearning for a long time.
Looking at Lin Qingyang's joyful smile, Lin Xinyi's eyes drifted into a daze.
Lin Ge had been back home for two years now, but what kind of liveliness had last year's birthday seen?
There was no banquet, no precious gifts, and not even the whole family gathered together.
Whoever happened to be home at the time was simply the one who celebrated his birthday with him.
At most, a couple of extra dishes were added, accompanied by a couple of casual, insignificant gifts.
Yet Lin Ge treasured those casually given, run-of-the-mill gifts as if they were priceless pearls.
Instead of touching his family, this behavior of his only made them despise him all the more.
They couldn't put their finger on any specific reason; they just felt that his actions were utterly lacking in class.
Lin Xinyi shook her head, cutting short her rambling thoughts.
She couldn't let herself ruin Qingyang's mood today just because she had overheard two of Lin Ge's inner thoughts.
After all, Lin Ge had only been back for two years. Even counting the two years before he was lost, when he lived at home, it added up to just four years of living together at most.
And little Qingyang had lived with her for sixteen years.
How many sixteen years does a person have in a lifetime?
Which was light and which was heavy? Lin Xinyi felt she could still tell the difference.
***
Meanwhile, Lin Ge did not attend Lin Qingyang's birthday banquet, finding himself feeling incomparably relaxed instead.
In the two years since he returned to the Lin Family, he had once been forced to attend Lin Qingyang's birthday banquet.
He had watched his family celebrate Lin Qingyang's birthday with high spirits.
Oddly enough, the Lin Family had never introduced Lin Ge's identity to the guests.
To the extent that those people simply assumed Lin Ge was just some child of a relative connected to the Lin Family.
In his innocence, Lin Ge hadn't thought much of it at the time, because his family constantly brainwashed him, telling him that his identity shouldn't be made public just yet so it wouldn't affect his studies.
They also claimed that since he had just returned to the Lin Family, some of his behavioral habits hadn't been corrected yet, and it wouldn't be too late to make his identity public once he had completely corrected them.
In the end, they decided his identity would be revealed when he turned eighteen.
In truth, what Lin Ge valued most upon returning to the Lin Family was that long-lost familial affection; he didn't care much about status and titles.
Therefore, he had no objections whatsoever to the family's arrangements.
Yet after experiencing the luxury of Lin Qingyang's birthday banquet, Lin Ge's own birthday had been treated by the Lin Family with pathetic thin broth and perfunctory dismissal.
Even so, Lin Ge hadn't minded in the least.
Back at the orphanage, he had never celebrated a birthday at all.
So being able to have a birthday at the Lin Family was already a dream come true of a happy life to him.
How could he possibly care whether it was grand or not?
Had it not been for being ignored to the point of drowning at the very end, Lin Ge probably would never have awakened to the realization that all his genuine affection had been given in vain!
Lin Ge lay in bed, his hands pillowed beneath his head, staring up at the ceiling as he contemplated how to walk the path ahead.
Thinking of the balance on the bank card he had just checked, Lin Ge couldn't help letting out a sigh.
Back at the orphanage, when he was just ten-odd years old, he had worked part-time while going to school to earn money. Even on a bad year, making a few thousand yuan was always enough.
Upon coming to the Lin Family, because he had to spend so much time trying to please his family, coupled with heavier academic burdens, Lin Ge had abandoned the idea of working part-time alongside his studies.
After all, in a wealthy tycoon household like the Lin Family, it wasn't the place of an underage kid to go out and make money.
During festivals and holidays, they would symbolically give Lin Ge red envelopes—truly just symbolic ones, ranging from thirty or fifty to two hundred yuan.
And they wrapped it in high-sounding talk about cultivating Lin Ge's character, fearing that contact with too much money too soon would ruin his state of mind.
Lin Ge didn't care about the amount of money; he carefully saved every red envelope given by his family, virtually never spending them. Over two years of frugality, he had actually managed to save a few thousand yuan.
Yet one had to know, Lin Qingyang's pocket money alone was at least twenty to thirty thousand a month.
As for Lin Ge, apart from living expenses, he received zero pocket money.
Don't ask for a reason!
If one truly had to find a reason, it was the aforementioned cultivation of Lin Ge's character.
In his past life, Lin Ge hadn't given it much thought either. He was used to frugality himself and knew that Lin Qingyang had been a young master of wealth since childhood, so spending heavily was only normal.
It is easy to go from frugality to luxury, but hard to go from luxury to frugality!
Coupled with the constant brainwashing from his parents and sisters,
he had never once envied Lin Qingyang, nor did he feel that his parents and sisters played favorites.
In fact, he had always believed that their harsher treatment of him was simply a reflection of treating him as their true biological son.
Had it not been for that jolting wakeup call at the final juncture of his life, Lin Ge probably would have continued living in self-deception.
Though these few thousand yuan weren't much, they could stave off an urgent need.
Combined with work-study programs, he could also earn scholarships at school, which should be enough to sustain four years of university life.
Yes, in Lin Ge's current planning for the future, this entire family had already been completely excluded.
There were still six months until the college entrance examination, which would take place shortly after his eighteenth birthday.
The moment he got into university, Lin Ge had decided to cut ties with the Lin Family completely and never cross paths with them again.
However, during the half-year before the entrance exam, Lin Ge intended to keep a low profile and lay low within the Lin Family.
These six months were precious and could not be wasted.
Having spent over a decade drifting as a soul after his death in his past life, he had forgotten most of his high school knowledge.
Although Lin Ge was exceptionally gifted, learned things very quickly, and possessed a photographic memory, there were only six months left after all.
Lin Ge's goal was to be admitted to the nation's premier university. He wanted to leave the Lin Family only after achieving the best possible results, leaving them full of regret.
He had no desire to fight an unprepared battle.
Thinking of scholarships, Lin Ge couldn't help feeling a trace of vexation toward his past self's "saintly" benevolence.
Just because, during a minor test shortly after he first returned, he had scored higher than Lin Qingyang, Lin Qingyang had put on a look of profound shame and anguish. This drove the family into utter heartache as they all swarmed around to comfort him, while faintly casting blame upon Lin Ge.
As a sensitive adolescent who originally thought doing well on exams would earn him praise, he now understood that such achievements made his family unhappy. From then on, he learned to hide his brilliance, deliberately scoring mediocre results on every test and keeping himself hovering just slightly above average.
He had squandered the opportunity to win scholarships for nothing.
Yet who could have known that in his previous schools, Lin Ge had always firmly held the top spot and won scholarships year after year?